Warming Up
by BadOldWestern
Summary: Alina appreciates whatever warmth Mal can offer. Mal offers all the warmth he can give.


Warm breath ghosts over the nape of her neck. Soft, shallow breath. Sweet breath. Gently alive, it coaxes her awake.

Warm arms squeeze her midsection, pulling her closer. Her fingers are tucked in the crooks of his elbows. Mal gives off a quiet, still-asleep groan and presses his face in her hair.

Warm blankets cover her and Mal, buried together in their soft little bed, snuggled safe. And warm.

Nightly precautions were successful taken, the ice coating the windows tells her that any laziness in this regime would have been met with numb toes and painful tension in her muscles. She wiggles her feet in their two pairs of socks, pleased with herself. Her toes were grateful.

He dreams of cold. He remembers it. He knows it like an always-achy joint, a stiff knee, a phantom limb, an old wound that still went on hurting. Familiar discomfort. It made itself at home in his bones, making it hard to ever truly feel warm. It never went away, lingering in his blood. So he dreamed of bitter cold.

"_I'm freezing," she says softly. He stares up at her. She's his little soldier. She never complains._

_It must be really, really bad for her then._

_He draws her hands into his own, rubbing them together to create some heat. They feel like ice. With a pitying groan, he sits up, gazing down at her, shivering in her bedroll._

"_Come here," he whispers, and she lets herself be lifted into his blankets. He pulls her as close as she can possibly lie next to him. _

_And with himself –__**hands-mouth-fingers-body**__- he warms her up the best he can, draping himself over her shivery little body and creating friction wherever he can._

_At first her groan of pleasure is expressly from blessed warmth -so much of it- but they ease into surprised, pleasured gasps as his hands slip under her clothes to directly warm her skin. Using himself –__**hands-mouth-fingers-body**__- to warm her –__**hands-face-breasts-body**__-_

"_Was that what you had in mind?" he growls in her ear, his hands burning a hot grip around her thighs as he lies over her, warmth easing to where he's lain himself between her legs. Her shivering turns to trembling when he uses his __**–breath-fingers-lips-tongue- **__to remove the numbness from her ears. _

_She nuzzles his face in response, and he feels the cold chill on her cheeks. Her eyes are shut; brow furrowed with evident pleasure, but guilt still bruises under his ribcage. She wasn't asking for this. He was distracted from the task at hand. _

_Still, she grinds up against him, and he notices the sheen of sweat dotting her brow. It's his heat she's settling for, and that damn stubborn streak of his stabs into his mind to make it worth it for her. _

_She can see her breath, and watches every pleasured gasp leave her lips as he warms his hands on her skin and uses them to pass on the heat, drawing it from the warmth fluttering under the skin of her inner thighs. She whimpers at his cold fingers dancing along the sensitive skin, only to shiver with arousal as the crawled towards her center, dipping into the heat. He coaxes her to roaring physical heat, bucking and writhing underneath him, panting, blood rushes through her veins. _

"_Warm enough?" he whispers. _

_Her eyes remain closed, her visible breath a steady wisp through her lips. She can't answer right away, only dryly gasps her appreciation. A soft groan escapes her lips, letting her head flop onto the pillow, and that's all the response he gets._

_He smirks, curling her in his arms to cradle to his chest, rubbing her back firmly to spread the heat down her spine. She lies limply in his arms, her limbs no longer frigid and tense, but languid and soft. _

"_You're so warm," she murmurs, the faintest curve of her smile sends an equal amount of heat surging through his chest. _

…

He thinks about those freezing nights often, perched over her calm, sleeping form. Her eyelids twitch as sleep leaves her, ebbing away from her dreams gently, because nowadays she actually enjoyed her dreams instead of fearing them.

Mal runs his fingers along the softness of her inner thighs, with equally soft caresses. Her head eases back into the crook of his neck as her back curves against the shape his body makes.

She smiles in response to his caresses, not opening her eyes.

"Feels nice," she slurs tiredly.

Encouraged, he slides out from behind her and holds himself about her body, kissing down her neck and chest and belly. He fumbles with the skirts of her nightgown, easing them up around her thighs.

This stirs her awake, smiling smugly at him when his hands grip her hips.

"Good morning," he murmurs without looking up, unable to catch the small smile on her face and dull glow in her eyes.

"For me it is," she retorts, but he chooses not to respond and playfully tease her.

Instead he lowers his mouth to her warm sex, surprising her with his own impatience. He simply works her over with his sleepy give-and-take, giving her his lips and tongue and fingers and taking in her breathy gasps, quiet whimpers and subdued moans. He's slower than usually, and gentle, the actions of his lips and tongue mirroring how he usually kissed her mouth. Gentle, warm caressing.

She falls to pieces from the works of his_** hands-mouth-fingers-body. **_When his gentle strokes grow slower she manages to open her eyes to catch his dark ones staring up at her, with a look that makes her limbs splay out and puddle to molten lead. He loves her face screwed up from too much pleasure but he also loves her strange and wonderful cloudy-eyed-clarity when he holds back. He watches her chest rise and fall with shaky breaths and feels her heels dig into his back and watches her hips tremble and finally forces her to let go, to peak and plateau how he wishes her to, with a soft, keening cry as her head goes limp against the pillows.

He crawls up her body, cock straining the fabric of his sleep pants and brushes along her wet thighs. She smiles tiredly up at him, holding his face in her hands as he slides into her. His cheeks are now as flushed as hers as she draws him down for a kiss. Her toes curl in their socks, tingling with warmth as Mal roughly fucks her, his hands harsh on her hips, fingers digging into her skin. He lets his head fall to the crook of her neck, and his hot breath against her neck makes her desperately grab at his hair.

He's so warm over her, her back sweats into the sheets and it's the only time she feels herself sweat in Ravkan winters. His rhythm is steady but slow, speaking more in force than pace. Her grip on him doesn't allow much room to move, so they rock together. Heat seems to melt their bodies together and she holds him tighter than she means to, but he'd never pry her fingers loose from him. She licks at the salty sweat on his neck and he groans softly, properly encouraged she sucks his skin hard. He growls, sent to the edge with a perfected roll of her hips, and fills her with hot seed that slides down her thighs and makes her whole body quiver with the feel of it.

She grips his shoulders when his arms quiver with his release. He grows shaky in the seconds following, draping himself over her body like a blanket. She digs her fingers into his hair and wraps her legs around his waist, not letting him leave. He's securely anchored to her body, feeling the hitching of her breathing he caused, so he rolls onto his back and pulls her on top of him. She grunts in agreement at this idea, already dozing off. He smiles, touching his fingers along the flush of her neck, her red cheeks, her swollen lips.

She's wonderfully, wonderfully warm.

_A/N. Ahem. The Queen is back. The highly anticipated story. Months in the making. Holy fuck am I out of practice with this stuff. Sorry guys. I'm slightly all over the place. Anyway, I'm back in the game! Requests open, message me on tumblr! _


End file.
